Backups
Schedule per-service backups to local disk or S3, and run them on demand.
VAC can run scheduled backups of your stateful services — a Postgres dump, a Redis snapshot, or any command you specify — and keep a retained history of runs.
Backups, managed databases, and the add-on catalog all live behind a single feature flag, VAC_MANAGED_SERVICES. Enable it at install time or later with vac managed-services on. When it's off, the backup scheduler doesn't run and the UI hides these features entirely — zero footprint.
How a backup config works
A backup is configured per service. You give it:
- a command that runs inside the service's container and writes the dump to stdout — e.g.
pg_dump,mysqldump,redis-cli --rdb, or your own script, - a schedule —
dailyorweekly, at an hour of day (and day of week for weekly), - a destination — local disk or S3-compatible storage,
- a retention count — how many recent artifacts to keep; older ones are pruned.
VAC nudges you toward backing up services it detects have persistent volumes — those are the ones whose data you'd actually miss.
Destinations
| Destination | Where artifacts land |
|---|---|
| Local | Under VAC's working directory on the host (in the vac_repos volume). |
| S3 | Any S3-compatible bucket. Credentials (endpoint, bucket, access key, secret) are stored encrypted with the master key. |
Scheduling and manual runs
When managed services are on, a scheduler loads enabled configs, computes the next due time, sleeps until then, runs the backup, and repeats. Newly added configs are picked up without a restart.
You can also trigger a backup immediately from the dashboard ("Run now"), which executes synchronously and records the result.
Every run is recorded with its status (running → success / failed), size, artifact
location, and any error. A failed backup fires a notification.
Managed database backups
If you use VAC's managed databases, they integrate with the same backup machinery — enable backups per database and VAC runs the engine-appropriate dump on schedule.
Backing up VAC itself
The per-service backups above protect your apps' data. To capture the whole VAC instance — control-plane database, certificates, and the master key — use the uninstall script's backup mode (it also works as a snapshot tool) or the disaster-recovery procedure. See Disaster recovery.